The Korean Tradition of Translation: From the Primeval Period to the Modern Era

Abstract

The Korean race has lived mainly in the Korean peninsula and formed a cultural community using Korean as an official language. In the early years, the Korean people tried to express Korean words with Chinese characters. Hanja was used as a method to express Koreans' proper thoughts and feelings even when they had not their own letters. Since the Korean people spoke in Korean and wrote in Hanja, they suffered from the inconsistency of the written and spoken language for a long time. The whole writing system of the Korean language was established with the promulgation of Hangeul, the Korean script which was created by King Sejong during the Joseon Dynasty. In the beginning, Hangeul faced heavy opposition by the literate elite who believed Hanja to be the only legitimate writing system. Later rulers too became hostile to Hangeul. Yet due to the growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century and the Gab-o Reformists' push, Hangeul was eventually adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894. The translation into Hangeul generally began to flourish in the late 19th century. Yet before the great Reform, there were frequently Hangeul